


Accident Prone

by swordfishtrombones



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: 1990s, 1997, College, M/M, Post-IT (2017), a little ambient possibly underage drinking and weed smoking, i will add tags as relevant, maine centric storytelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28947993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordfishtrombones/pseuds/swordfishtrombones
Summary: Richie swallowed his heart and cranked the window down, letting the stinging air in long enough to watch the bus doors open and the very first person, Eddie, tiny stupid Eddie, hop down into the sludge like a leprechaun.Eddie was wearing a blue parka, an enormous wooly hat, and a huge grin. His backpack looked as big as he was.If Richie wasn’t tied down by his seatbelt, he might try to climb through the window to him.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38





	Accident Prone

The morning of Eddie's arrival, Richie woke up with a huge fucking cold sore on his bottom lip, burning hot and throbbing like a beating heart. Megan had already caught her bus to spend a cold spring break in New York, and apparently Bev wasn’t up at nine in the morning to dispense cold sore-related advice over the phone, leaving Richie with the dubious conclusion that all he could do was wear it with pride. 

By the time Richie pulled into the icy Portland Greyhound station, he'd worried his lip against his teeth until one of the blisters finally burst and started weeping clear, metallic-tasting fluid into the corner of his mouth. Richie craned over his steering wheel to peer into the station, but it was the weekend and the morning, which meant it was locked and dark inside. _“Not the Portland Transportation Center, the other one,”_ Eddie had said on the phone after class that Tuesday—and Richie, who’d rather let Eddie freeze on the curb for hours than admit he’d never had cause to locate the station, had spent the first morning of spring break driving loops until he found it. 

In the parking lot, Richie looked around inside his car, trying to see it through new eyes. The car would be new to Eddie—Richie had bought it just seven months prior, at the end of the limp and stifling summer between sophomore and junior year. Minus two beautiful hazy weeks spent getting blazed at mildewy basement shows with Beverly, in that brief window when she was home from Smith, Richie had hardly seen his friends. Mike was still spending summers in Derry, where Richie didn’t like to go; Bev was off to spend August with extended family in western Mass; and Eddie was in Ellsworth, in an ugly little garden apartment, with just his mom and his apparent unwillingness to steal her car. They’d had other friends, once, but they were far away now, and Richie (who had earlier that semester bought some recreational Adderall off a classmate and then experienced some personal revelations) found it hard to remember where or who they were without an embarrassing degree of concentration.

The four of them had shared one good long weekend driving around in Bev’s aunt’s Subaru, fucking around Owls Head, eating greasy burgers and peering off the sides of cliffs. But then Bev was gone, and the Subaru was gone, and once again, Richie was alone. 

Hence: the ugly and dented white ’89 Volvo station wagon you see before you. _A car you can believe in._ You could whizz past forest and farmlands with a car like that. You could cross state lines, go in and out of cities, and keep going. 

Under Richie’s feet, the floor was covered in the inevitable mid-winter cocktail of dirt, salt, and gravel. A soggy cardboard box of cassette tapes peeked out from beneath the passenger seat. In the cupholder, a few nickels were glued permanently in place by a long dried puddle of Mountain Dew. 

There wasn’t much Richie could do about any of it, short of rewinding time and becoming someone else. Instead, he turned back to the rearview mirror and examined himself. He looked exactly how the entire state of Maine looked around the spring equinox: bloodless and damp. There was a hole in his sweatshirt where the collar was trying to come detached. Richie wormed his finger into the tear, ripping it wider, and brought it to the front. If Eddie was going to notice something about Richie, Richie just wanted to notice it first. 

Through the window, the sound of gravel crunching under heavy tires. A silver bus pulled up next to Richie’s car, as dirt-splattered as the station itself. 

Richie swallowed his heart and cranked the window down, letting the stinging air in long enough to watch the bus doors open and the very first person, Eddie, tiny stupid Eddie, hop down into the sludge like a leprechaun.

Eddie was wearing a blue parka, an enormous wooly hat, and a huge grin. His backpack looked as big as he was. 

If Richie wasn’t tied down by his seatbelt, he might try to climb through the window to him. 

Instead, Richie stuck his head out the car window, grinning so wide the winter air hurt his gums. “Hey, Spaghetti! How many geriatrics did you trample to be the first off the bus?”

“Just your grandma, and she likes it rough,” Eddie called back, flipping him off. An old man coming off the bus behind him glared. Richie laughed, his stomach clenching and unclenching. The weekend was gonna be good. 

Eddie swung into the passenger seat, pushing his ridiculously overstuffed JanSport into the backseat. His cheeks were pink in irregular blotches, his ears sticking out under his hat, a fizz of hair sweeping his forehead. A little tousled, which was fair—he’d been up before six to catch the bus from Boston, and for some reason, knowing that made Richie want to rush out and buy him something. Or at least celebrate the end of the forty-eight hours he’d spent morosely wandering his empty apartment by leaping on Eddie and licking his face. 

“You can’t say that kind of shit in Portland, Maine,” he told Eddie, cranking the window back up as fast as he could. “We’ve got traditional values here, we respect our grandmas, and if you blaspheme three times in a row Jock McKernan appears in your house and won’t go away til you start a nuclear family.”

“That checks out,” Eddie said, pushing off his hat with one mittened hand. “It is an extremely fucked up place.”

They looked at each other and grinned. Suddenly feeling very excited, Richie reached over and punched Eddie’s shoulder. 

“Ow,” said Eddie, and then, pointing at Richie’s swollen lip, “That’s disgusting.”

Richie puckered up, offering the blisters for closer inspection. “My curse, the mark of experience.”

“It is not, you’ve been getting those things since you were like, nine.” Eddie wriggled around, pulling his seatbelt over his lap. “More like the mark of being gross and finishing every abandoned chocolate milk in the cafeteria. And I don’t need proof of that, ’cause unfortunately for me, I saw it happen.”

“It’s an STD, you know what the S stands for?”

“Yeah. Stupid.”

“You’re bound to either get ’em on your dick or your face.” Richie glanced pointedly to Eddie’s crotch. “You better _hope_ it’s your face.”

Eddie balled up his mittens and threw them in Richie’s face. “Quit thinking about my dick, Trashmouth.” 

Richie laughed and revved the engine, loud enough to cover the blood in his ears. 

+

There was less to show of Portland than of Boston, but there was _something_ to show.

They parked the car outside the Nickelodeon, tossed Eddie’s JanSport in the back, and wandered around. It always felt natural to follow the tilt of the earth down toward the water, so they did that first, staring across the Eastern Promenade at the little stony strip of beach, all crisped over with thin ripples of ice. Then up again, slipping over the frozen cobblestone, passing little touristy stores closed for the season and still-bustling cafes, windows opaque with steam. The Old Port was a mess in the winter, craggy stone streets turned into pure icy sludge. Every few minutes Eddie slipped and swore, and Richie laughed, like Eddie was the problem, like Richie was a local, someone who had chosen Portland, instead of washing up on the shore. 

It didn’t take long for Richie’s tour to devolve in a survey of his own most memorable exploits. There was the Irish pub with a parrot painted on its wall, where Richie had been caught with a fake ID just two days shy of his twenty-first birthday. There was MECA, where Richie’s roommate Megan and all her friends spent their days talking about, like, the transformative possibilities of felt. Richie had gone to the student showcase last semester, got wasted on complimentary pinot grigio, and woke up the next day spooning a large wooden puppet he’d bought at auction. 

They came up to a junk shop that Richie adored, dimly lit and dealing mainly with old records, pornographic posters, and miscellaneous geodes in tall glass cabinets. He nodded them inside with the idea of stealing some warmth. 

Eddie huffed relief inside the door, wiping his nose on the back of his mitten, and looked around. “This place is cool.”

Richie tried not to preen. “Yeah,” he said, and went to absorb himself flicking through a crate of LPs before the owner caught his eye and gave him away. 

Eddie came up on the other side of the stacked crates. He glanced to the corner of the room and grinned.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Richie followed his eyes. There were a number of things hanging off the wall, moth-eaten sweaters and sequined dresses with mighty shoulder pads. Eddie was looking at a suede jacket, long soft tassels hanging along the shoulders, and a patch depicting the Tasmanian Devil swinging a lasso affixed under the right breast.

RIchie laughed. “Kickass. You wanna try it on?”

Eddie dropped his gaze and wiped his nose again. “Naw.”

“It’d look tight on you.”

Eddie snorted and busied himself with digging through a crate of records. “You come in here a lot?” 

“Sometimes.” It was embarrassing, for some reason, to admit he liked a place. Better to let Eddie draw his own conclusions. “Gotta find ways to occupy myself, all alone in the big wide world.”

Eddie looked up at him wryly. All at once, Richie felt a little bit defensive.

“How ’bout you?” he asked. “I mean, what the fuck. What’s up in Boston?”

Eddie shimmied the _Pee-wee's Big Adventure_ soundtrack out of the crate and flipped it over. “Nothing,” he said, eyes skimming down the back of the album. “No one does shit in Boston.”

This struck Richie as both pleasing and unlikely. “Don’t, like, Celtics fans beat the shit out of each other on St. Patty’s Day?” 

“No one does shit,” Eddie corrected, still looking at the album, “except drunk douchebags getting in fights on the T, and rich dicks daring each other to piss on historic gravestones.”

The disgust in his voice took Richie aback. Usually Richie was the one to steer conversations away from school. Only Richie and Mike had stuck in Maine—but even Mike had noble reasons for going to UMO, something-something about his grandpa and the farm. Meanwhile Richie had wound up at USM because he spent high school in detention, and because when the counselor asked him about his goals, he said he was still deciding between Courteney Cox and Fran Drescher. 

“You can be a dumbass sports bar asshole,” Eddie went on, “or daddy’s little fucking, blazer-wearing genius. Or no one.” He shrugged impatiently. Tucked the album back in place and flipped through a few more. 

Richie flicked through some albums himself, aimless and not really taking them in. He cleared his throat. “I say I say,” he said finally, a little stiff in his Foghorn Leghorn voice. “Son, in this life, it’s not _what_ you know, it’s _who_ you know.”

+

Richie’s home of two years was a creaky South Portland two-bed, made precious by virtue of being _his._ His and Megan’s, normally, but now, for a week and a half, it was Richie’s domain. At the door he gallantly insisted on hauling Eddie’s backpack up the stairs, and made it almost halfway before stopping to wheeze and whine. They carried it together the rest of the way, Richie leading and Eddie bringing up the rear, one strap in each of their hands.

Inside, Eddie made straight for Richie’s bedroom and flopped onto the old white comforter. Richie dropped down next to him, lying on his back and grinning.

“You made it,” Richie said.

“I finally fucking made it,” Eddie agreed. “Sorry it took so long, Rich.”

“No biggie. I don’t visit you either.”

“Yeah, but I live in a cement box and eat cafeteria shit three times a day,” Eddie said, rolling onto his side to look at Richie. “You’ve got, like, a place.”

“A place in Portland, Maine.”

“Oh, right, I forgot. Fuck it, then.”

Richie wanted to turn onto his side too, but then they’d be curled toward each other, which was probably too much. He flipped onto his stomach instead, letting his feet dangle off the end of the mattress. 

“You joke,” he said. “But just wait. I mean, yeah, it’s better than downeast. But you’ll be squealing for _Bahstan_ soon enough. You better believe _I’m_ sick of going to the same places over and over.”

“This is why you need to get out of here,” Eddie said. 

“So you don’t have to pay any more pity visits?” 

“No, fuckwad. So when we come back, we’re both visiting.”

That was an idea. Eddie and him in a car or on a bus, coming home together just because they wanted to. Richie considered it.

“Eh,” he said. “When we’re rich and famous I’m not gonna waste it on _Maine. I’m_ going to Tokyo. I wanna eat fish that’s still alive and begging for mercy.” He wriggled his index finger at Eddie’s face, and Eddie batted it away. “I do have one thing for us to do tonight, though. There’s gonna be some parties, if you’re into that.”

He’d expected Eddie to hesitate, or maybe to scoff. Instead he perked up instantly. “Your friends?”

Richie shrugged. “Sure. Lots of people took off for break, but yeah, some of them.”

Eddie sat up and slid onto the floor, landing on his knees and unzipping his backpack. “I’d kill to go to a party. This semester, dude.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said shortly. 

He was crouched by the bottom of Richie’s bed frame, and Richie bit the inside of his cheek, trying to remember what he had stuffed under there. “It’s not like, for hours.”

Eddie sat back on his heels. “That’s fine. You got anything to drink?”

Which also felt weird. But if Eddie could stay quiet about whatever mess was probably stuck under Richie’s bed, the least Richie could do was get up and find him a beer. 

+

When they arrived at the party, just a few blocks from Richie’s place, it was already dense with bodies and music. Through the window, Richie could see a layer of smoke hanging in the apartment, giving the impression that the young people of Casco Bay were slowly melting over shared weed and body heat. 

Melting sounded pretty good. Eddie had shivered the whole walk over, despite the scarf layered over his dweeby turtleneck, and Richie wasn’t much better, constantly blotting his own dripping nose with the cuff of his jacket. Eddie swore that the hundred miles between their schools actually made a difference to the climate. “Boston has _cars_ and _exhaust fumes_ and _people_ ,” he told Richie, his teeth chattering cartoonishly. “It’s so _fucking_ cold here because no one _f-fucking_ lives here.”

Not totally fair, considering Richie himself was an actual voting resident of Portland, Maine, but he still forced a laugh. Eddie had a point, in a way. Maine made you feel like walking to a party in the dark was a novelty, something special. But Boston had parties, and cars, and people. All Portland had to offer was a few negative degrees. 

Inside, Eddie hissed with relief, slamming the unlocked front door with his whole body. Music thumped above them, peals of laughter rolling down the staircase.

 _“Yes,”_ Richie said happily, kicking off his boots and peeling away his coat, shoving both into the chaotic pile of winter clothes already taking up the landing. 

Eddie pulled off his own coat, then stooped to gather Richie’s. He tucked his parka into Richie’s coat, pushing one downy sleeve into the other, and set them gently in the corner. 

Richie’s face was still stinging from the cold, and he grinned at Eddie, feeling pink and raw. “Good thinking.” 

Eddie unlaced his own boots, steadying himself by grabbing a handful of Richie’s sleeve. “Just don’t lose me.”

It wasn’t bad for a USM party. Groups of two and three dotted the apartment, leaning against walls and doorways, talking and laughing, a few people doing the self conscious shuffle that passed, in New England, for dancing. Drooping Christmas lights dangled around the windows. On a sunken couch, a few girls Richie knew from Comm 101 were smoking weed and talking in huge, squawking voices.

“I don’t care how long we stay,” Richie said. “Just shout—”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “ _You_ tell _me_ if _you_ wanna leave.” 

Richie opened his mouth to snipe back, but he was cut off by the sound of a distinctly drunk, girlish voice calling his name. 

Heather, a friend of a friend and the resident of the apartment, was making her way toward them, rosy-cheeked and hazy-eyed. She flounced into Richie’s space and flung her arms around his neck, beaming like they were good friends, instead of two people who had, on occasion, stood in line for the bubbler. 

“I’m so glad you came!” She patted Richie’s cheek clumsily. The scent of spiced rum wafted into Richie’s face, and he laughed, hugging her briefly.

“Good to see you too, madame hostess.” He glanced over his shoulder at Eddie, standing awkwardly behind him. “Listen, my friend Eddie and I gotta get a drink, but—”

“Come talk to me!” Heather dropped her arms and stepped backwards toward the couch. “It’s my party, so you have to!”

Richie caught Eddie’s eye and nodded toward the kitchen.

“Who was that?” Eddie asked at the counter, tipping the last of the Captain Morgan into a blue plastic cup.

“Heather.” Richie grinned at him over his own cup. “She lives here.”

“You guys, like, take a class together?”

Richie snorted. “You _have_ been gone too long. Big city gent forgets what it’s like to know his neighbors. He must resort to social clubs to engage with minds of caliber, while we country folk make do with the same townspeople a-gain and a-gain—”

“Forget I asked.” Eddie brought his cup to his lips and drank steadily. He had, Richie noticed, developed another pink flush in his cheeks, spreading down his neck.

Richie watched him swallow, feeling halfway between confused and admiring. “You’re less of a lightweight than the last time I saw you.”

Eddie, proving his point, set his cup down and started pouring another. “When was that again? This summer? When we saw each other two fucking times?”

“Whoa,” said Richie, genuinely impressed. “Point.” He watched Eddie start in on his new drink, sucking it down with businesslike determination. “Uh. All good?”

Eddie smacked the cup back on the counter. “Getting better.”

Richie might’ve said something to that, but then the music, which had been oscillating between the genuinely cool and the semi-ironic, _skkrtched_ and shifted. 

_“I am not trying to seduce you.”_

Richie all but screamed. He threw his drink back, gasping and wiping his hand over his chin, and tossed the solo cup over his shoulder. “C’mon,” he said, hooking his hand into Eddie’s turtleneck and pulling him toward the living room.

Richie was in it to win it, bounding through the shameful cluster of dudes not even _trying_ to macarena. Around them, the other dancers edged away to make room for his limbs. 

Eddie looked at him like he wanted to be exasperated, but Richie knew that look. As a general rule, Eddie had to be about 50% drunker than Richie did to start dancing, but tonight he had a head start. If Richie flailed his arms wildly enough and looked stupid enough, Eddie would crack and fall in line. It was physics or something. True to form, Eddie gave a few nods of the head, and when Richie shouted _“Yes!”_ he laughed and started jumping around for real. 

Pretty soon Eddie was doing his own aggressive pogo, his face contorted with laughter as Richie scream-sang along. 

“Come and find me, my name is Macarena!” Richie screamed. “Always at the party con las chicas que son buenas!”

“I can’t believe—” Eddie shouted, and then something Richie missed, singing over Eddie’s disbelief.

“What?” Richie shouted.

“I said I can’t believe you know the words!”

Richie laughed and put his hands on Eddie’s shoulders, linking them together. Bounce-bounce-bounce-bounce, the room going up and down but the two of them on the level. Eddie’s eyes were shining. “I can’t believe you _don’t,”_ Richie shouted.

“All my music comes from you!”

 _“Fuck,”_ Richie shouted, “this isn’t a recommendation!”

“What?”

“It’s not a good song!” 

_“What?”_

“I said I wanna smoke pot!”

Eddie was not a pot smoker (“I don’t care if it’s addictive or not, I’m talking about blackened _lungs,_ Richie”) so Richie, feeling chivalrous, deposited him on the couch with the girls from Comm and went to get him another drink. 

Back in the kitchen he hesitated, thinking about Eddie’s flushed neck, and the three solo cups he’d already drained, and the two beers he’d put away in Richie’s apartment. Richie looked around the counter for a second and grabbed a relatively harmless looking ’Gansett. On second thought, he flipped on the tap and filled a cup with water, figuring he could at least offer both. 

By the time Richie made it back to the couch, control of the stereo had been gained by a guy named Kevin who had been dumped four times in one semester and who was now playing _Pinkerton_ in its entirety. Richie plunked onto the floor in front of Eddie, who had been pulled into conversation with the Comm girls. Two of them were piled on the far end of the couch, explaining something excitedly, while the third sat lazily on the floor across from Richie, blowing plumes of smoke through her nose and watching the conversation with hooded eyes. 

Eddie had procured a new drink from somewhere, dark and syrupy looking. Richie frowned at it and slid the ’Gansett onto the coffee table between the littered ash and bottle caps. He put the cup of water into Eddie’s free hand. Eddie gave him a distracted smile and took a sip. 

“It’s not like _astrology,_ ” one of the girls was saying. “It’s not _fortune_ telling, it’s self-reflection—”

“Hi, Richie,” said the girl on the floor. 

“Hey, Suzie,” he said, leaning over to accept her offered joint. Any other time of year, they would’ve been out on the front porch, or at least leaning politely toward a cracked window. New England winters made you give up the pretense. It was warm in the apartment, and Richie was enjoying the foggy kind of happiness that came around this time of night, this time of year. 

“My cousin’s been asking about you,” Suzie told him, watching him hold the smoke in his lungs. “You wanna call him back, or should I tell him to buzz off?”

Richie shook his head, exhaling with a cough. “I’ve just been busy. You can tell him it’s my bad. Make me sound cool, though.”

She shrugged. “He just likes to plan.”

“I’ll call him.”

Eddie was looking between them with a glazed expression, worrying the rim of his water cup with his teeth. 

“We should find Heather’s deck, I _know_ she has one,” the girl on the couch was saying. “Remember, after she and Will—” and then all three girls dissolved into giggles, ending with one of them catching sight of Heather and jumping up with speed that Richie, two puffs in, already found amazing. One of the girls grabbed Suzie by the wrist and pulled her along, laughing, leaving the joint pinched between Richie’s fingers.

“Wow.” Richie took a drag and exhaled slowly. “They fucked right off. How do I smell?”

Eddie bent his neck down toward Richie’s collar and sniffed. In the movement Richie could see how drunk he was, less leaning than flopping, jellylike. His arm was warm when he pressed it against Richie’s shoulder, faint mustache over his lip, and for a moment Richie was so happy he thought he could melt with it. 

Eddie pulled a face of childlike disgust. “Bad.” 

Richie laughed. “I’m so sorry you gotta be around me, then.”

“’S okay, I’m used to it.” Eddie raised his hand and gave Richie a good-boy pat on the head. “You ol’ stinker,” he said affectionately.

“Sweet, Eds, real sweet.” Richie offered the joint, just in case, letting Eddie scowl pointedly at Richie’s cold sore by way of responding. Richie took another puff and looked toward the kitchen. “I give it five minutes ’til they start reading palms. Wanna know how you die?”

“No.” Eddie sighed and sank back into the cushions, sloshing his drink. “I wanna sit. Too many people.”

“I thought you weren’t gonna get sick of the party.” Richie exhaled slowly and coughed. He caught Eddie’s wrist, steering him to feed Richie a sip of water. 

“I don’t mean…” Eddie gestured around the room. “I mean, like—” He spread both his arms, embracing the whole world.

“Tired of humanity but you still wanna hang with me,” Richie said, leaning forward to punch his knee. “I’m your favorite person!” 

Eddie rolled his eyes.“You’re not my _favorite_ person,” he said. “You’re just, like, the only person I can stand.”

“Oh,” said Richie, grinning. He felt pleasantly underwater. “Duh.”

Eddie tilted his chin and narrowed his eyes at Richie. “You have _friends._ I didn’t know you got us all replaced.”

“Aw, Eds. Like I could do that. No one else has walked through literal shit with me.” 

Eddie groaned. “Why did we _do_ that?” 

Richie shrugged. A lot of childhood was blurry. When he tried to remember middle school, some part of his brain always piped up, whispering, _better not._ It was, after all, a very embarrassing time. “I don’t fuckin’ remember. Who cares. Important thing is we _did_ it, and we’re better men for it.”

Eddie made a retching sound, and Richie laughed. He felt awake and happy, but he could feel the weed in his system by the leaden weight of his legs, and by the desire to curl up doglike on the couch with his head in Eddie’s lap. He loved the way Eddie’s skin felt. Hot and nice. 

“What about you,” he said, raising a finger and poking Eddie’s leg. “New sewer buddies?”

Eddie pulled another face. “I told you,” he said. “It’s all, like. Assholes and rich kids. And rich assholes.”

“Maybe you’re socially challenged.” Eddie raised his socked foot and kicked Richie in the shoulder, and Richie laughed, going on. “You should come home more. See your real friends.” He poked his own cheek with his index finger and gave Eddie a Howdy Doody smile.

“Ugh.” Eddie twisted his mouth, looking across the room with unfocused eyes. “I can’t. ’S not good anymore.”

“You did it last summer.”

“Yeah, and it sucked shit. Would you wanna, like, go lie around fucking _Ellsworth_ , with all your friends saying they’re gonna come see you, and then not doing that?”

Richie paused for a second. The room lurched into focus. “Maybe if I had a fucking car,” he said sourly. “Or if I still lived with my, my parents, and I could've used theirs.”

Eddie just sighed heavily, letting his head fall back against the couch. 

“You wanna know the worst thing,” Eddie said, his voice slurred. “The worst thing, Richie, is that I get, like, so fuckin’ homesick. Can you believe that?” 

“Sure,” said Richie. 

Eddie squinted at him. “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” said Richie automatically. He wasn’t. It just was a tiny bit irritating, was all, to hear Eddie whine about missing home when they’d both been hellbent on getting away, and only one of them had succeeded. 

He brought the joint back up to his mouth and sucked in some more of the lung-blackening smoke. It would be stupid to be mad at Eddie for having his shit just marginally more together than Richie did. It wasn’t like Eddie was going to Yale. He was going to Suffolk, which accepted 84.4% of all students, a statistic Richie knew from the big green reference book his father had encouragingly given him in junior year.

 _“Don’t_ be mad at me,” Eddie said. “Asshole.”

Richie looked at his face, stubborn and imploring at the same time, and all at once the notion that he might’ve been mad felt sort of heartbreaking. He’d probably had too much pot. It made him touchy and dramatic after a while. 

Richie leaned over the coffee table and used one of the forgotten bottle caps to grind out the stub of the joint.

“You’re such a brat,” he said. “Like you’d even let me.”

+

Getting Eddie back up the stairs was harder the second time, despite the subtraction of his stupid heavy backpack. Eddie was pretty drunk, which made him not want to acquiesce to anything, and Richie was pretty high, which made him want to sit down on the stairs and hum himself to sleep the way he’d done once or twice before. But not tonight, not with a _guest._

Richie dragged Eddie into the kitchen, sitting him down at the plastic folding table that he and Megan had found outside the USM science building. Eddie dropped one elbow onto the table and the other directly onto the answering machine, which beeped loudly at him.

“You trying to leave a memo?” Richie brought him a glass of water. “Drink that.”

Eddie drained it obediently. He gasped for breath, closed one eye, and tossed the empty cup overhand into the trash.

“C’mon and slam,” he said.

Richie leaned over the trash can and fished it out. “What was that for?”

“’S plastic.”

“It’s like, _nice_ plastic, dipshit. I only have two of anything, don’t go throwing my stuff away or you’re gonna wind up drinking from the toilet all weekend.”

Eddie stood up a little unsteadily and looked across the room into the trash can. “Is it trash night?”

“Ugh. Yeah.” Richie put the cup in the sink to join his cereal bowl and two empty tupperware containers from the night before. “We can stick it on the back porch, I'll take it out next week.”

Eddie looked at him like he was insane. “Or we could, fuckin’, take it down on _trash night.”_

“Yeah, well, we _could._ But it’s like three a.m. and you’re not standing up too good.”

“I can _do it,”_ Eddie said huffily, and shuffled across the kitchen to the trash can. He grasped the plastic bag and yanked it upward, the white plastic bin lifting off the floor with it. 

“Eds, Eddie,” Richie said, jumping to help him. “You don’t have to, I can take it down.”

Eddie shot him a look. “Let me _help,”_ he said, pulling the bag free with just a little bit of a stumble. 

Richie rocked back on his heels. _He wants to help me,_ he thought, and instantly felt overcome. 

Eddie paused, his fingers tearing straight through the plastic bag. “Are you crying?”

“Fuck!” Richie rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. “This happens sometimes.”

“Oh,” said Eddie knowingly. “You’re depressed.”

“I’m _stoned.”_

“Jeez. You wanna take this side? Here—”

They did the same maneuver they’d done with Eddie’s backpack, just in reverse, jostling the garbage bag down the stairs and out the front door. Someone had already pulled out the garbage can from under the porch, thank god, and it only took three tries going _one-two-heave-ho!_ before they managed to swing the leaking bag into the can. Down in the cold with no coat over his sweater, swaying drunkenly on the other side of the garbage can, a tuft of hair sticking straight up from his forehead, Eddie shot Richie a vibrant, bleary grin. A thought rang through Richie like a bell, clear and light, the way his thoughts sometimes did when he was blazed. He gulped a mouthful of frozen air, and laughed at nothing to make his brain shut up. 

Upstairs again, Eddie wobbled right past the couch that Richie had made up for him, and back into Richie’s dark bedroom. He collapsed onto the mattress.

“I’m going to sleep,” he told Richie. 

“Okay,” said Richie, switching off the light in the living room. “I get a say?”

“Nope.” Eddie scooted over, melodramatically accommodating, and patted the space next to him heavily with the palm of his hand.

“Wow,” said Richie. “Thanks so much.” But he was sliding into bed next to Eddie, drawing the comforter up over them both. Under the covers, they both wriggled out of their jeans, kicking them off opposite sides of the bed. Richie tossed his glasses onto his bedside table. 

They lay silently for a moment. Richie squinted at the ceiling. He couldn’t tell how far away it was, some weird optical illusion from the dark or the weed. Sleepily, he reached his hand up to see if he could touch it. Beside him, Eddie reached his hand up, too. 

“Richie,” Eddie said. “I gotta tell you something.” 

Richie was trying to get his eyes to focus on their two hands, grabbing at something they couldn’t reach. He paused. “You okay?” 

“Yeah. I guess. I lied to my mom.”

Startled by the thickness of his voice, Richie let his hand fall to his chest and turned his head. It was dark. Just the outline of Eddie’s face, the shadows of his eyes and mouth. 

“About what?” 

“About this,” Eddie said. Richie could feel him swallow through the slight movement it made against the pillow. “I told her I wasn’t coming home. I said, ’cause I’m an RA. I had to stay. For the residents who were staying.”

Richie took a moment to process this. “How come?”

“’Cause I didn’t wanna come home. ’Cause. I didn’t wanna see her.” Eddie was trying not to cry, it was obvious now. Richie didn’t know why that wasn’t more embarrassing. If it was anyone else, it would’ve been. 

There was another hole in this. Richie furrowed his brow until it came to him. “But. It’s spring break.”

“Yeah.”

“She believed that?”

“I don’t know. Rich. I don’t think she cared. It was like. I didn’t have to be smart.” Eddie sniffed, once, in the dark. “I always thought, like, at least my mom… at least she really _cares._ But... I had all these, like, fuckin’ lies planned out. If she asked. But she didn’t ask.” 

What was he supposed to say? Richie tried to think. “You can tell them to me, if you want,” he said. “I’d believe ’em. I’m very stupid.”

Eddie laughed wetly.

Emboldened, Richie went on. “And if she really didn’t care, Eds, she’s stupid too. The stupidest.”

Silence. Then, very small, Eddie said, “She’s my mom.”

There was nothing to say to that, the undeniable heart of it. 

His arm was stretched along the bed, parallel to Eddie’s. Richie pushed the back of his hand against Eddie’s, feeling their knuckles hard against one another. Eddie pushed back firmly for one moment, sighed, and turned over to face the wall. 

“Let’s go to sleep,” he said into the pillow.

Instead, Richie sat up in bed. The blood rushed from his head, and he blinked, dizzy. “Where are you going Monday, then?” he said.

Eddie rolled onto his back again. “Boston, I guess,” he said. “Cafeteria’s closed, but I can get into my dorm.” 

“So, like. You’re gonna go stay in your, what’d you call it, cement jail cell room alone and eat ramen noodles all week?”

“Like you’re a five-star chef.”

Richie laughed. Even in the dark and the haze, he felt something light rise in him. Delight, he realized. He was delighted. “You fuckin’...” he said. “You’ve got a week to do whatever? No school, no job, just _whatever the fuck you want?_ You… Jesus! Stay with me. Stay here.”

Eddie went still. 

“I mean,” said Richie. “If you want.”

“I thought you might say that,” Eddie said. 

“You thought I might?” Richie snorted. “I’m not a _villain.”_

“Okay, I thought you would. I figured.” Eddie was quiet for a minute, thinking so hard Richie could almost hear it. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Okay. Sounds good.”

Richie laughed again, thrilled and surprised. “Are you serious? Why didn’t you just, like, ask me if you could?”

“I don’t know,” said Eddie.

“Holy shit! Wow. We’re gonna have the best time.”

“It could be good.”

“Could be!” Richie crowed into the night. “Will be. Eds, when this cold sore goes away I’m gonna give you the biggest smooch of your virginal life.”

Eddie groaned and tossed his arm out as if to clamp it over Richie’s mouth. Instead it landed with a thump in the middle of his chest. “Richie,” he said. “Please shut the fuck up.” 

Richie could do that. The weed was pulling him down like another force of gravity. He shimmied under the covers, loving the delicious feeling of the sheets on his skin and the weight of Eddie’s arm over his chest. 

_Dale a tu cuerpo alegría Macarena,_ he thought happily, until Eddie hissed _“Richie,”_ and he realized he was singing out loud. Richie giggled, unable to help himself. Eddie snorted against his pillow. They laughed softly together for a minute, until finally Richie was too tired to keep his thoughts in a straight line.

 _When I dance, they call me Macarena,_ he thought, careful to keep his mouth shut. Before he could get to the next line, he was asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> ok folks it's 2021 i'm doing spring cleaning and that means we are getting our long abandoned drafts OUT of google docs and INTO the sunlight even if that means posting a wip which i personally don't usually do because i find it very nerve wracking! hope it's a good idea and not a bad one!
> 
> if you want you can listen to this [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1NKiuB4lishYQaBJ2TEm2b?si=o_NLfFTwSi-tKVB4syIkew) of songs i imagine richie blasting while driving around portland. i started making this playlist when i first felt the desire to write a story like this, in, yes, october 2019 😬


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